


(If You Wanna) Cry

by euhemeria



Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [81]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23764285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euhemeria/pseuds/euhemeria
Summary: On the best of days, they have little in common, but on the worst of them, they have more than enough shared experiences.  Fortunately for their friendship, and unfortunately for the both of them, the latter days are far, far more common.Or,A fic about friendship.
Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [81]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/508281
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	(If You Wanna) Cry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [binarylazarus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/binarylazarus/gifts).



> CW: mentions of past suicidal ideation. its not graphic or anything but its there
> 
> also angela has mildly negative attitudes towards addiction in one sentence but i feel its in character since like. her convos w jesse abt quitting smoking. "just quit" is not helpful but ANYWAY its less a judgement thing and more an "ID never do that" thing which. yanno
> 
> oh yeah and recreational drug use, but like, weed
> 
> im high as balls

On spring evenings, the air outside of Overwatch Headquarters is still pleasantly cool, and clean. While Geneva is not so cold as her own home canton, and is considerably lower in altitude, if Angela only closes her eyes, it is easy to imagine that she is back at her home—her first one, in Graübunden, before the Crisis and her subsequent move to Zürich, far from the city, and other people. To be reminded of that home, that place, that time, is something that Angela cherishes, because she knows that, even now, not even fifteen years later, she has forgotten much of her early childhood, and of the home she lived in the first seven years of her life.

But there is a danger, too, to remembering. Angela knows well how the brain works, how memory is formed, knows that each time she remembers something, she does not in fact recall the thing itself, but is instead picturing the last time she thought of it, replacing the actual memory, eroding it, such that one day, what she will know of her past—her family, her home, her little village—will be gestalt only, an outline with no detail, all filled in by her own supposition of what a childhood, a home, a family ought to be.

So on days like today, days when she does not need to remember, is not desperately clinging to that past for one bit of comfort, of happiness, of love, on these better days, she forces the thoughts from her mind. Later, the memory will still be new. Later, some part of her past will not have been replaced by her time in Overwatch, paved over to make way for something bigger, newer, brighter. Later, perhaps in a few decades, she will be able to close her eyes, and the smell of the air will remind her again and then—then she might need the reminder. Then she might be alone in the world, even more so than now, and will need that piece of the past to cling to.

The air here is not so clean as the air at home was, anyway. Green energy initiatives cannot change the fact that Overwatch has far too many people in one place for anyone to breathe well, and Angela does not want _this_ air to be what replaces her memories of home, thinner and sharper. It is no substitute. 

So she tells herself, anyway. In both, however, there is this, unacknowledged—the smell of blood, dried on her skin, of death.

(Her final memory of her home is the air strike, the last one, and there were other smells, of course, but it is the blood that stayed with her for years afterwards, not the dust, not the smoke. People died more quickly than they could be buried, and she learned the sickly-sweet undernote that accompanies rot.)

Perhaps today was bad enough that she does need the memory of her parents, after all, the knowledge of what it is she is fighting for, the loss she is trying to prevent other children from enduring.

But no—not yet. There are other things to try first and maybe, _maybe_ , she can save that memory for now.

There will be bad days in the years to come, too. She must not waste all the good now.

So enter Jesse, her foul weather friend. On the best of days, they have little in common, but on the worst of them, they have more than enough shared experiences. Fortunately for their friendship, and unfortunately for the both of them, the latter days are far, far more common.

Most days, they find each other here, on the roof of the west building. No one is supposed to have access, of course, the door only existing so that the solar panels can be attended to, but they are certainly not the only people who come up here, judging by the fact that someone has left a chair, stolen from the cafeteria. It is not a beautiful place, is anything but, the roof inexplicably covered with gravel that crunches under their feet, and any view blocked out by the surrounding buildings or the wall behind them, but that is fine. They do not need to see, for that would be to acknowledge the reality of the situation, to know who and where they are.

They do not want to be here, and they do not want to be themselves, most days. And that is fine—it is—because as much as they hate their work, Overwatch is doing good things, is ensuring that an entire generation of children will not grow up to be like the two of them, orphaned, alone, and forced to kill.

(Not forced, Angela corrects herself, because she _does_ have a choice. Even when she must pull the trigger to ensure that she survives, that is a decision she has made, to live, is a decision that her life is more important than that other person’s, because she is going to save people, she is going to heal them, and that makes it okay, somehow, to kill others. She hates it, hates that she has made that choice, but it is true, she _can_ save others, and she has to live so that she can keep the people she cares about alive, too. But she cannot dwell on it overlong—she came here to forget, to think less about how it feels, to have been forced into that position, to not feel, just for a little while. She has decided to live, and so she will, she will, and she will not punish herself for that, not today.)

Given the circumstances, it is understandable, Angela thinks, to want to escape. Anyone would. At least she does so responsibly, or as much as she can. She does not drink regularly, she does not smoke cigarettes, she does not take medications, or anything which might harm her. If she is going to live—and she has decided that such is what she wants, she _has_ —then she is not going to do anything which might shorten her life. 

That does not mean, however, that when Jesse has weed, she is not going to ask him to share, because she does, and she is. Given the differences in their salaries, she offers to pay, but most of the time he refuses. 

“S’not expensive,” he tells her, “And what the hell else am I gonna spend my money on?”

That, at least, is a fair point. Overwatch takes care of all their other needs—their food, their clothing, their housing. For the both of them, having grown up with so little after losing their parents, it is hard to imagine spending on luxuries, because what they have now feels already like it is too much. After spending the better part of her life with wartime rations, Angela still catches herself wondering, sometimes, if she is eating too much out of the communal kitchens, if she is really _allowed_ to have as much as she wants of the luxury items, the chocolates, the coffee, the imported fruit. 

So neither of them buys much, even now, and Jesse has more than enough money to spare for the weed. Particularly cheap as it is.

(Angela never smoked, before she met him, still does not know, really, what constitutes _good_ weed, but he has told her this is cheap, and he has no reason to lie to her.)

“I could think of a few things,” says she, tone suggestive, but really, he is right. Aside from elective surgery related to her transition—admittedly, a very large expense—Angela can count on one hand the number of purchases over 50€ she has made since joining Overwatch. 

“You don’t even leave base!” Jesse shoves her a little as he says this. “You can’t think of anything, and you know it.”

At this, she pouts, but it is mostly put on. Already, her mood is improving, because although Jesse is a fine person to brood with, when she absolutely has to do so, he is also remarkably good at lifting her mood—at least temporarily. “I have fun _sometimes_.” 

(She does. But mostly, Jesse is right. When she leaves base, it is usually with the intention of finding someone to sleep with, for the night, and given that she recently had surgery, that is currently off the table. That is not exactly an expensive hobby, and only fun 60% of the time.)

“I’m just teasin’ you,” Jesse says, as he passes her a joint, “’Nd they keep us too busy to have any fun, anyway.”

That, Angela can agree to, and wholeheartedly. In Overwatch she is never bored, it is true, but that is only because she does not have the energy to feel that way, at the end of a long day. The same tiredness hounds her now, and where once, she might have been angry about the events of today, might have been sad, might have been anxious, she is now just _exhausted._

Emptiness is dangerous, she knows, is worse than those other feelings. If she felt something more, then at least she would be driven to change things, would want to do better tomorrow, would want to ensure a day like today did not happen again, but when she feels as she does now—defeated—the only thing to do is to push through the feeling, and hope that the future will be better.

Likely, tomorrow will not be.

But that is why Jesse is here, with her. She is with him, in the middle of the roof, and not alone, near the edge. It was a bad day, but he is a tangible reminder that she has something to live for, has _people_ to live for, friends who are like family to her, whom she needs to protect. She sits down on the chair a bit too heavily.

“ _You_ keep me busy,” says she, instead of any of the other things she is thinking, jabs her joint at him mock-accusingly. “If you didn’t get yourself shot every other week I’d have twice the free time I do now.”

“I didn’t—” Jesse coughs, for a moment, having inhaled too much smoke, “I didn’t get shot this whole month!”

Angela just watches him cough, for a minute, smokes and waits for him to regain his breath. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“Well it’s better than—” more coughing, “Better than having gotten shot!”

“Marginally,” she concedes, “Yes.”

“Aw come on, Ange—”

“ _Angela,_ ” she corrects, because she did not choose this name to have it replaced with another, shorter one, and she does not like where this conversation is going, wants to do something to change the subject.

“C’mon, Angela,” he says, “It’s not like I _try_ and get shot. I can’t help it!”

At first, she was joking, telling him he kept her busy, but she is far from being amused now, thinking about the kind of danger Jesse is in every day—sometimes a country or two away from her, now that she is out of the field, recovering from surgery. Each time he leaves, there is a risk that he will not return, and she knows that for now, there is nothing she can do about that. It weighs on her, and she knows that the decision she made, right as it was for herself, may have consequences for others.

(Already, it has. By the time Haugen got back to base, he was beyond saving, and she did not know him, not at all, but she regrets his passing, and regrets even more that, were it not this month, she might have been in a field hospital closer to where he was injured. But she was not there, was here, and he looked nothing like Jesse, so pale that even his eyelashes were white, but he was the same age as she and Jesse are, and he never will be again, and that weighs on her. It could have been Jesse. It could have been him, her only real friend in the world, and what would she have done then? She has decided that her life is worth living because this way, she can save the people about whom she cares, but right now—right now she cannot do that, not to the best of her ability, and it is because of a choice she made.)

Rather than answer Jesse, she takes another hit. For a moment, there is silence, again. She thinks about closing her eyes, imagining the countryside, her home, the warmth of the sun on her face in contrast to the chill of the breeze at her back, a better, brighter world before all of this—but she cannot smell it, anymore, cannot taste it on the air, and without that the memory slips out of her reach.

What she can smell is this—the weed. It stinks, frankly, is not clean like the mountain air, or cold, and she should hate it, but the fact that she is smelling it means that yes, she is here and now, and not there and then, but Jesse is with her, too. That is what matters, in the end, that she is not alone. 

To waste what time they may have together is a terrible thing, and so, although she does not open her eyes, she does not argue with him either.

“I know,” says she, and she does. She knows that he cannot help the world they were born into, cannot change the circumstances he found himself in in the past, can only try to stay alive, here and now, as can she.

Like this—with him, smoking, some combination of the two—it is easier to see that. When they come down off the roof she knows that it will be harder, that the clarity this time affords her will be gone, and the anxiety will come back, will threaten to consume her, and she will only be able to think of him dying, of Torbjörn being hurt, of Ana and Jack and Reinhardt and all of the others falling to their enemies. All of them depend on her, need her to watch over them, and that pressure nearly overwhelms her. She needs them to be safe, to be well, because they are all she has, and because she has allowed herself to care for them.

(To care for someone is a risk—she knows that, knew it before she ever met them. To love and to feel love means that one might lose the person one cares about. For a while, she tried not to let herself get too close to any of them, and for the most part, she stays away still from all but Jesse, for she does not want to grow too familiar, fears that it will make her worry more, will cloud her judgement, and therefore end up with her unable to help them, in the end. It is a lonely way to be, but that loneliness is better than the loneliness of loss, and she has these moments here, with him, where she can almost pretend that they are normal people, who do things other young adults might enjoy, and not two people brought together because they were all but drafted into their parents’ war.)

Right now, she does not need to worry, can choose to push that aside, just for a little bit, and that is what matters, what _ought_ to. At any other time, she cannot shove her anxieties away, lets herself drown in the thoughts of _what if_ and the guilt over the decisions she has made, which brought her here today, the people she could have saved but did not, the people she tried to save but could not, and the others she made to die so that she might have those opportunities. At any other time, she thinks one little wrong thing, and it pulls her down to another, and she sinks and she sinks and she sinks, and where the bottom of that ocean of grief and pain and anger lies she does not know, fears to find. 

Right now, though, she can choose to ignore it. Nothing can make it go away, but here, like this, she can just look at the view above the water, where everything seems calm. Her worry about Jesse is just a ripple on the surface, no matter how hard that other part of her is thrashing below the water.

Right now, she pushes all worry aside. She knows, she does. Jesse is here, now, and he _wants_ to live, has not simply chosen to, and he is not getting himself killed any time soon.

“You sure?” Jesse asks her, moving as if to step towards her before shifting his weight, again, and staying where he is.

Is she? Not always. But here and now, she can see that Jesse does not want to die, does not want to be injured, and wants perhaps least of all to hurt anyone else as a result of his occasional recklessness and frequent bad luck, “I’m sure,” says she.

This time, Jesse does move nearer her, reaches out as if to put a hand on her shoulder before thinking the better of it—it is he who likes physical reassurance, not she—and sits down beside the chair, looking off in the same direction she is, at the back of the solar panels, as if there were anything to see, as if they were somewhere else, somewhere better, and tells her, “Good. Because I don’t,” and then, quieter, scared, “I don’t wanna die.”

One day, in the future, Angela hopes she will be able to say _I don’t either,_ but for now, she chooses one answer that is not a lie, “I don’t want you to die,” and one answer that is, “I won’t let you.”

(It is not a lie in that she will let him, because although she cannot know it yet, he will not die in a firefight, but it is a lie in that she knows very well that she cannot always help him, cannot save everyone, and one day, she fears, she might not be there in time. She knows that she cannot promise him his life, cannot promise that she will be able to protect him, and yet she does it anyway. Lying is wrong, she knows, but to acknowledge the truth he does not want to—that she can only help him some of the time, that she cannot always keep him from harm—would be cruel. He is scared, and he needs to know she will do what she can to ensure he comes home, or at least back to here, safe.)

“Thank you,” he says, almost a gasp, his forehead against the edge of the chair back, as if he could bury his face there. “Thank you.”

To promise him that feels wrong, when she knows she cannot make good on her words, knows that it could have been his blood on her gloves today, not Haugen’s, could have been his eyes she saw as he was carried in on a stretcher, his moment of clarity—of terror—just before the end. She hopes that one day, he will not have that moment himself, will not be dying on a battlefield somewhere and think suddenly back to this, back to her, and realize that she lied to him, that her words were empty.

But would it be better for him to live in that fear? 

No, it could not possibly be. Angela lives that reality, every day, spends so much of her time so aware of the risks they all face, the pain in which they die in a hundred different terrible ways, the fragility of their lives. She knows what it is for someone to die, knows the fear of it, the intense loneliness, sees it in the eyes of the people she tries to save, over and over and over again, and she knows that no matter how many times she succeeds, no matter how many times she brings Jesse back from the brink, or any of the other people they know, any of the others she cares about, she only needs to fail _once_ for them to be lost forever.

To live with that fear is impossible. At best, she survives. 

So she will not be honest with Jesse, will pretend that she can save him from death if only so that she can spare him her life. 

“I won’t let you die,” she repeats, again, pulling his head against her, his face pressed into her hip, “I promise.”

If she were stronger, she would find a way to be honest with him, instead, but she needs him to be as happy as he can be, needs for him to be able to enjoy parts of his life, rather than living it in dread, because he is one of the people who makes her own worth living. It is a selfish desire, to placate him as she has, but it is the best choice she feels she can make in this situation. One drowning man cannot save another, so she will do her best to ensure that he always keeps his head above water.

Yet she wishes she could do more, as she feels him shake against her, wishes there were something she could offer him, wishes she could move from off of this chair to comfort him, but it is like she is frozen there, one hand pressing him against her, feeling him shake with fear and sadness and relief all at once, and the other bringing the joint to her mouth. If she cannot help him now, how can she hope to save him in the future?

But then, even as she is frozen there, still, even as she feels powerless to help him, to stop his pain, she notices that he is calming, that the tears are quieted and he is breathing more evenly, now. “Thank you,” says he, when he finally pulls back, but his tone is different now—not a choked breath but a sigh of relief, and then, “’M sorry about that. S’just been a tough week.”

“It’s alright,” she tells him, turning at last to look at him, because when he spoken again whatever held her in place seems to have lifted, and she can breathe, too, can move. “I’m sorry for bringing this up at all.”

“I was gonna cry anyway,” Jesse says, standing, again, fixing his hat on his head, knocked back from when he leaned against her, and moving over to where he dropped his half-smoked joint earlier, making sure to grind it in the gravel, ensuring it is extinguished. His back is to her, then, and she thinks that standing, he can probably see just past the North residences, and to the forest beyond, the green of the trees in sharp contrast to their stark surroundings. “Haugen,” says he, long and slow, “Shiiiiiit.”

“Shit,” she agrees, because what else is there to say about it? Twenty-two is far too young to die.

More silence, but the emotion is gone out of both of them now, the fear, the sadness, the anger, and there is a moment of peace, almost. An abatement.

“I’m glad you’re here, Angela,” Jesse finally says, “Don’t know who I’d cry to without you.”

“You’d find someone,” says she, and believes it, too. He is personable enough, certainly more so than she, and easier than most to be vulnerable near.

A grunt, disagreement, before he turns around. “I don’t rightly know that I would,” he tells her. “Now pass me the j, I dropped mine.”

So she does. She hands it over, and for a split second, feels the warmth of his skin against her own as it happens. He is warmer than any memory. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic was supposed to be a funny one abt ana catching angela and jesse smoking skunk weed on the roof and being like. u dumb motherfuckers. angela could simply write u, jesse, a medical card, and then ud have free access to the good stuff and could do this publicly, rather than being on MY roof where I smoke MY cigarettes
> 
> also yes the random chair on the roof was put there by ana
> 
> to be clear the tl on angelas life w the swiss places shes mentioned as living in is graubunden (0-7) --> zurich (7-overwatch) --> geneva (overwatch). sorry for no umlauts im high and lazy
> 
> anyway. yeah. they are Existing i suppose. pls lmk ur thoughts on this one. im never leaving the writing of a 420 fic til 4/20 again bc i wrote all of this while high off my ass. i had too many edibles and yeah. hopefully it all makes sense bc in the middle of this i took an hour long cry-laughing session over the fact that kk sliders smile is the grimace emoji
> 
> also add me on animal crossing
> 
> the end


End file.
